


From Ghosts Like You

by beedekka



Category: True Detective
Genre: M/M, Outdoor Sex, Season 2, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:25:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/pseuds/beedekka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 'What If...' set in Episode 5, inspired by the scene where Frank and Jordan talk honestly at the club.  What if instead of putting down the vodka he's just poured and following her, he stays and drinks it? </p>
<p>(Or, Ray/Frank in the period after the Vinci Massacre and before the detective team is reunited to investigate the Caspere case again.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Ghosts Like You

**Author's Note:**

> As an aside, I've gone with 'Gena' for the name of Ray's ex-wife here because that's what imdb has, but I know that a lot of the publicity material uses 'Alicia' instead. Frustratingly, no one has said her name in the show itself yet (honestly, in all the conversations she and Ray have together she uses his name repeatedly and he never once says hers!). Hopefully someone will say it in one of the remaining episodes...
> 
> Also, my apologies for the cheesy nature of the last line XD The episodes seem to be specialising in cheesy endings, so I hope it's in the 'spirit' of the show.

“I’m a consultant.”

“On what aspects of the business?”

“Security.”

“And this is for the casino only?”

Ray clears his throat. His lawyer is shrewd. _Which is a good thing_ , he reminds himself – it’s what’s going to keep him in contact with his son. “Occasionally also at a bar and restaurant premises.”

“Would this premises be the Lux Infinitum?”

“Yes.”

“Mr Velcoro, you are aware that the family courts will consider the nature of your current employment when coming to a decision?”

“Yes.” So he can risk his life and get shot to shit as a cop, but checking ID on the door of a club calls his parental stability into question. _Fuck that._ “My professional commitments will not involve me in anything they can use to contest custody – I’ll make sure of that.”

She smiles at him and closes the file in front of her. Ray wonders if she’s just humouring him in return for a pay check now. Well, he doesn’t have a hell of a lot of money left to give her, so his association with seedy nightlife is unfortunately going to have to become more regular not less. Pulling double shifts at the Lux might just let him string this out long enough that he can try and persuade Gena to reconsider.

“Are we finished here?” he asks.

“Thank you for the information you’ve provided. I still require your signature to formally agree to the toxicology urinalysis before I can prepare the final submission, but yes, then we are finished, Mr Velcoro.”

_Good._ He really needs a cigarette.

 

*** 

 

In the poker room he chain smokes and watches the dealers. Frank put him in the office with the monitors and told him to use his skills as a perceptive observer, so that’s what he does. The tech is old, providing grainy black and white images that fuck with his vision when he looks away – all pixels and blind spots – but he finds something relaxing about the job. Watching the rhythm of the games play out hand by hand, seeing the chips move in and out; it’s an easy way to lose time. The clientele are overwhelmingly nobodies there to try their luck, not experts working the system, so as long as Ray pays reasonable attention to the cage cashiers and the staff around the registers he figures he’s doing enough to earn his wage.

Technically he’s supposed to keep an eye out for fighting and punters robbing each other as well, but the guys on the floor can hold up that end of things without his direction so he watches them instead. They spend a lot of time filling time, too: kicking out broke drunks and cracking heads in the alley by the parking lot, sparring their reflections in the wall mirrors, reading their phones. One week, he even gets to watch Blake fuck the same tall blonde girl against the stairs down to the cellar for three nights running – completely unerotic, but compelling all the same. The movements he sees through the monitors are jerky and awkward; surreal without the audio to accompany visuals like fists driving into flesh, or flushed thighs slapping together, and the timestamps counting up in the corner of his vision are the only reminders that it’s all really happening, right then and there in the same building.

Shit like that makes Ray wonder if people just straight up forget that there are cameras all around them… He grimaces. There would be one on him in the office right now, but the first thing he did was yank the wire out.

More and more he finds himself watching Frank and Jordan as they move around like shadows from room to room, passing close to each other but hardly interacting.

_Frank, do you realise how much you’re actually letting me see up here?_

He considers the question for a moment. _Yeah, maybe he does._

 

*** 

 

In the Lux he chain smokes and watches the dealers. It seems like more money passes from hand to hand in dark corners than goes over the bar, yet somehow being surrounded by as many drugs as he could ever want makes Ray’s newly clean resolve feel firmer, not more fragile. Unlike Vinci Gardens he’s right in the thick of it here in the club, and he kind of likes that. For this gig, Frank had remarked that his temper was an asset and encouraged him to take full advantage of the opportunities to ‘work through his anger issues’ on any Mexican rent-a-hoods or overzealous punters who might show up and mouth off or harass the girls. Ray had shaken his head and replied that he was only there to count how close to capacity they got and make sure everyone had a safe night out, as if that was ever what Frank wanted him around for… Even so, he still slips the knuckle duster into his pocket before every shift – warm around his fingers and ready to devastate someone’s face with one blow if he needs it.

The pounding, moaning soundtrack in the club gets muffled easily by the radio earpieces, but the heavy bassline resonates through his spine and teeth no matter how he stands or leans. It makes his body feel hot and edgy, and he wonders if that’s why he hasn’t been missing the drugs; he can draw some of the same sensations vicariously through his skin instead, breathe in what the people around him breathe out, and lose the hours until dawn just simmering and watching an endless parade of the kind of financial and physical transactions he’s no longer expected to bust anyone for.

Frank is often in the club, although he doesn’t stick around for long on the floor when it gets busy. Ray supposes that the novelty of owning all of this wears off fast when you don’t really want it. Occasionally he’ll come out from the back to greet someone in the VIP and comp them some expensive cocktails or hard liquor, but he always excuses himself after one drink. Ray pays particular attention to who’s deemed worthy of the glad-handing, recognising the usual local lowlifes, and a smattering of minor celebrities amongst a steady trickle of young men with flashy jewellery and expensive suits. _Vinci’s up-and-coming golfing community of tomorrow!_ he thinks – visiting the Lux to put a face to the name that’s been on their radar ever since daddy started grooming them to be the next head of the family business. They think they’re getting a look at Frank? He’s the one clocking all of them, measuring up which ones he can afford to never acknowledge again, and which ones just might be worth keeping the tab open for.

Ray has to admit, coming to ‘consult’ for Frank full time has given him a huge window into the way he works his shtick, day in day out. And how he handles himself is impressive… _consistent_. Before the shoot out and its aftermath, Ray had seen the business side of Frank Semyon only in flashes; meeting to receive instructions or payoffs, passing on intel. He never had a full sense of how Frank interacted with the players in his working life. Now he’s racked up enough surveillance hours on him to give a regular organised crime officer a fucking hard on. Ray has to figure that Frank knows that, too; that there was a reason he’d kept asking him to quit the PD and move over into his crew even before the Caspere case went bad. He was coming to the conclusion that Frank _wanted_ a good pair of eyes on his back, and that he knew Ray would have the skills (and probably the balls) to highlight to him any weaknesses he saw. 

 

*** 

 

It’s 1am in the club and the night is slow. Tuesdays are always the dip night, and since Ray can’t get a good buzz off a crowd that isn’t there, he’s itching for a drink instead. They’re overstaffed for the numbers in anyway, so he calls his own break and moves off his floor position, intending to get a beer from the back and go out on the delivery ramp. Nothing gets brought in that way at night and it’s become his chosen hideout when he wants to smoke and cool down alone for a moment.

He’s been out there for a while, walking slowly back and forth at the top of the ramp by the closed shutter, when he hears the door beside it open behind him. _So much for the fucking solitude._ Turning, he knows it’s Frank before he gets all the way around; the silhouette in his peripheral vision is enough to give away his build. “Coming to fire me for ditching my shift? I’m going back after this,” Ray assures him, holding up the cigarette.

“No, I thought I’d join you for some fresh air.”

“Just air?” Ray can see the vodka bottle swinging in Frank’s hand with a little left in it, and he wonders how full it had been to start with because Frank isn’t quite as precise with his step as he usually is, nor as sharp around the eyes.

“Yeah, I’m drinking, Velcoro. Well noted.”

Ray shrugs. “So am I.” The beer’s tucked against his palm, cold and dripping condensation from touching his skin, and he raises it in salute.

“Cheers.” Frank holds up the bottle in return but doesn’t take a pull.

“It’s quiet,” Ray tries, unwilling to take the conversation away from the banal. He’s not quite sure why Frank’s out here or why he’s like this, so he wants to play it safe.

“Tuesday. You don’t like working the club when it’s like this.” It was a statement rather than a question, which catches Ray’s attention.

“What makes you say that?”

“Whatever it is you get out of it – it takes a critical mass. Didn’t reach it tonight.”

Ray doesn’t say anything in response; reflects instead on how for some reason he hadn’t thought about Frank picking up on things about him as they went along as well. Or maybe he was just remembering little details from when they were first getting to know each other? Back then there were some similarities in what kinds of buzz they both enjoyed: packed clubs, bumping on coke, dirty money to burn, fast cars…

“I feel,” Frank begins, sliding his free hand into his pocket and leaning against the brickwork by the door, “like addressing some ghosts tonight.”

He _was_ thinking about the past. Ray sees Frank’s eyes flick down and back up his body, only for a split-second but clearly enough for him to realise where Frank’s mind is going. He wavers on whether to acknowledge that or to wait and see what else Frank has to say, finally settling on taking a swallow of beer and turning to flick his spent cigarette out into the shadows beyond the cast of the security light. He hears the splash of vodka against the glass as Frank drinks as well, so that makes two of them apparently happy to let the ghosts do all the talking. Eventually, Ray goes with, “It’s been a while.”

“There’s been a lot of ‘look but don’t touch’.”

_Who set that up?_ he was tempted to reply. “Who’s looking now?” he asks instead, tilting his chin towards the exterior camera that was there to cover the ramp and the shutter.

Frank laughs a little. “Technically, me – yet I’m out here. What does my security consultant have to say about that?”

“Not Jordan?” Ray ignores the joke in favour of asking what he really wants to find out.

Frank just laughs again, but Ray holds his gaze until he has to answer by shaking his head. “She went home. She’s not always around.”

Since Ray has been watching them for weeks, he knows that she’s somewhere near-by more often than not, so Frank can’t blame him for asking the question. Jordan is the other person who Frank has covering his back, and Ray’s pretty sure that her consultation and critique is a damn sight more on point than his would ever be. Maybe that’s the reason Frank’s out here in the first place, cufflinks missing and a little unsteady on his feet?

“Is that the background to this… conversation then?”

“Raymond, we’re responsible for the background to this conversation. I might be drinking this vodka because of my wife, but she isn’t why I’m talking with you. Things aren’t always as cause-and-effect as you think they are.” 

Again, Ray wants to say something contradictory, because cause-and-effect is pretty much how everything has always happened with them; a linear narrative of conversations that lead to actions that lead to consequences that cause conversations that… He shakes his head. “Alright. You’re drinking – that’s just a coincidence – and we’re out here together. These ghosts that need chasing out of the machinery; what do you want to say?”

Frank stoops and puts the bottle down by the shutter, and when he straightens up he covers some of the ground towards Ray with more focussed coordination. “It’s not what I want to _say_.”

And Ray knows what’s coming next, and that if he wanted he could brush Frank off and go inside and this would just end up like that night after he got shot at Caspere’s place: a temporary and not very coherent acknowledgement of the fact that there’s something simpatico between them that gets difficult to ignore; a brief entanglement that would be shelved away as ‘done with …until the next time’ when they were both sober again. But with Frank standing right there in front of him – _politely goddamn waiting for this thought process to finish_ – and giving him that look like fire is starting to lick up behind his eyes, Ray is finding it supremely hard to think of a reason why he wouldn’t take the free fuck being offered this time.

“So do it, then,” Ray tells him, and tosses his empty beer sideways into the dirt to punctuate the invitation. That’s all the go-ahead Frank needs to take one more step forward and close the space between their mouths. Ray can taste the vodka on his lips, sharp and clean, and he lets Frank walk them clumsily off the ramp as they kiss, unconsciously using his height to crowd Ray back. It takes them out of the light as well, and something about that distracts Ray enough to pull away. “You hiding us down here? I thought the camera was dark?”

“I turned off the camera but there’s still a door behind us,” Frank murmurs before pressing in again to kiss deep. He has a plausible answer to everything, and that’s almost more disconcerting than reassuring, but the way he works his tongue is good enough to draw Ray back into feeling instead of thinking. The wave of heat he hadn’t been able to soak up off the crowd tonight is coming to him now and fast and strong as Frank’s hands snake down to his hips and slide around to grip his ass.

Ray doesn’t normally get loud when he’s fucking, but when Frank’s fingers squeeze and pull him forward he can’t help the hitch in his breathing, so obvious with Frank’s face right up to his that Ray feels like he may as well have moaned. It really has been a while since he’s had anyone touch him like this, and without the pills and the hard liquor to blur the edges off everything, his body is responding to every little touch and tease with embarrassing intensity.

Then Frank palms his fly and Ray is swearing, harsh and low, his hard on filling Frank’s hand and feeling way too restrained by the heavy cotton around it. When he starts stroking and cupping him through the material, the space gets even tighter and more torturous, and Ray just about yanks himself back so he can get his hands on his belt and undo it. Frank’s reaction is slow, his hands staying where they were, empty, for a second while he opens his eyes and brings Ray’s face into focus.

“You’re breaking my dick like this,” Ray says, and watches Frank process that he wasn’t pulling _away_ away.

“You think I’m gonna kiss it better?”

_Kiss my ass,_ Ray wants to reply, without thinking, but then it’s his turn to catch up with the situation and he has enough presence of mind to growl, “Yeah, I do.”

There’s another second’s pause as their eyes meet and Ray can’t tell how Frank’s going to react to the challenge, then the hands are suddenly firmly back on his hips, grasping and dragging down his pants. _Oh, fuck._

They’ve done this before, but not since Frank has been with Jordan and absolutely not in the open air around the back of a building with Frank’s knees in the dirt. When he leans in to blow him, Ray almost can’t believe that what he’s looking down on is actually happening, and isn’t just another low-fidelity closed circuit image that he’s watching from a distance with a timestamp counting up. Except it must be real because he can hear the audio to it: his own breathing, still embarrassingly loud; the muffled bassline of the music bleeding out from inside the club; the rattle of the aircon units venting on the wall above the delivery shutter. And he can feel the deep wet heat of Frank’s mouth around his cock, sucking him a fraction too hard and too fast for Ray to be able to savour all the detail of how his tongue moves, how his eyebrows knit down in concentration above the closed eyes that mean he is the only person who’ll have a memory of how this fucking scene looks…

He shudders and swallows the sound he wants to make when Frank moves one hand to his own fly, stroking himself distractedly through the expensive material as he sucks Ray in even deeper. “Jesus.” Ray’s holding his shirt up out of the way and his fingers twist in the material as the heat in his groin starts building more precisely and more insistently in the spot that tells him he’s going to have to warn Frank sooner rather than later. Whatever led to this tonight, to Frank’s sudden desire to push for something again after so long, he doesn’t fucking care at this moment. Whatever Frank’s going to do or say to reassert his authority once he fully realises that he went down on his knees at Ray’s command – fuck that too, because right now this is all part of a perfect build up to what’s fast becoming an overwhelming urge inside him. 

_Fuck._ “Close,” he gasps out, and he’s expecting Frank to pull back off him but he doesn’t; he just opens his eyes and looks up, right as Ray is about to close his own and drop his head back. When he comes, seconds later, pulsing hard over Frank’s tongue, he knows he’s watching him do it and it’s so fucking intense that Ray wants to hit something.

After a moment, Frank does pull away, sitting back on his heels and letting the hard outline of his cock stand out for Ray to see through half-closed eyes. Even preoccupied with getting his breath back, Ray can decode the message clearly enough: _Yeah, I get off on that, and yeah, you’d better do something about this._

Ray’s response isn’t exactly the most elegant jerk-off he’s ever performed, but he recalls enough of how Frank likes it that when he gets his hand down his pants, palm wet first with spit and then with precome, he has Frank cursing and spilling into his fingers in less time than it would have taken to smoke the post-orgasm cigarette he’s craving so hard. If Frank notices how shaky Ray is, he doesn’t give any sign of it afterwards though, just watches hazily as Ray wipes the worst of the spunk off his hand with the hem of his own shirt and tucks it back in. Fuck it, it’s not as if there’s anyone who’s going to be looking closely before he launders it again.

When they move back into the light of the loading ramp, Ray sparks up and Frank retrieves the vodka, taking the last pull and swilling it in his mouth. Ray thinks he’s going to spit it, but he swallows and then tosses the bottle into the shadows to join the one Ray discarded earlier. It clinks on the ground and stops with a skid instead of smashing, which means that brand probably costs more than the pay check Ray’ll be picking up for this shift. He inhales the cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and holds it down for a second before breathing out; it’s only nicotine, but the faster it starts to work the better. As an afterthought he offers the packet to Frank, remembering that one of the only times he’s ever smoked with him in the past was after a really good fuck. Ray’s pretty sure that he didn’t consciously have a lot to do with how much Frank got out of what they just did, but it’s still somehow gratifying when he takes one.

“So, the ghosts…” he asks as Frank takes the first drag. “Are they appeased, or exorcised now?” 

Frank doesn’t answer – just looks out into the darkness where they’d been a moment ago, expression inscrutable – so Ray smooths down his jacket, pushes his hair back and walks inside, leaving him to finish smoking the cigarette alone.

 

When he gets back to the floor, there’s a bit more activity and a few new groups of drinkers around in the booths and at the bar; the hostesses and the pushers are circulating with an increased focus. Ray’s tired and done with the night now, but at least that’ll give him something to look at. He’s trying to keep his mind’s eye from straying back again and again to one indelible image from their encounter outside, but it’s seared into him. Ray doesn’t want to think about why he’s _still_ getting aftershocks in the pit of his stomach, or how simultaneously powerful and completely out of control he felt in that split-second when their eyes met and he came down Frank’s throat.

Tonight they hadn’t laid any fucking ghosts to rest at all; they just got themselves even more haunted.

 

_-fin_


End file.
